Warren Truss speaks to the media in Brisbane on Tuesday. Photograph: Dan Peled/AAP

The Nationals leader, Warren Truss, said Julia Gillard rewrote history when she looked back over her tenure as prime minister in a public interview in Sydney on Monday night.

Gillard took part in a Q&A session with the prominent feminist Anne Summers at the Opera House in which the focus was her time in office and her treatment as a woman.

She reflected on her treatment saying she sometimes felt a "murderous rage".

"It just amazes me that we can be having this infantile conversation about gender wars," she said.

"You really feel like saying, 'Well, Mr Abbott, if it was your daughter and she was putting up with sexist abuse at work, what would you advise her to do? " 'Because apparently if she complains she is playing the victim and playing the gender wars? So, in your analysis, what does this woman do?' "

When asked about Gillard's assertions on sexism, Truss, who was acting prime minister while Tony Abbott was in Jakarta, said she was entitled to her views as a private citizen.

"That was an occasion to Julia Gillard to reminisce on the past, in some cases to rewrite history like other Labor prime ministers have done after they've retired," he said.

"I think she's entitled to be honoured as a former prime minister. She's entitled to put her perspective on the events that occurred when she was the prime minister, and leading up to it and thereafter.

"But I think that's a matter for her, for the Labor party and I'd just encourage Australians to let her get on with the rest of her life."

In an apparent potshot at Kevin Rudd, who ousted her from office, Gillard said the key difference between the pair was that every day she was deputy prime minister she worked to help the Labor party prosper.

The interim Labor leader, Chris Bowen, said he had not watched the interview on television but he had heard about the remarks Gillard made when referencing Rudd.

"Kevin Rudd behaved professionally and in the best interest of the Labor party in all times in my experience," he said.

"He returned to the prime ministership at the request of the party because the Labor party took the view that it was in the best interest of the party."

He added: "[It] wasn't necessarily in his own best interest; he could have declined the offer to return to the prime ministership, but he didn't because he felt it was in the best interest of the Labor party to be available and the Labor party owes him a debt of gratitude."

Bowen also said Gillard had much to be proud of and had achieved a lot as prime minister.